Chapter Text
True Love at the Death of the Ancien Régime
“I am Your Excellency’s loyal subject, Marquis Lohengramm.”
The words echoed painfully in Reinhard’s head, over and over. Ten different emotions had shot through his heart at once in the moment after he heard Kircheis say those words to him. He hadn’t even truly meant to ask the question that prompted it, his own guilt over what he had allowed to occur on Westerland and his fear that even Kircheis had rejected him had forced him to act without thinking.
Even if it was for a new, grievously painful reason, the young blonde Fleet Admiral was no stranger to spending what little time he should be using to sleep laying in his bed with his face pressed into the pillow as if he was ashamed to let even the furniture around him catch him crying. He would be sobbing, if he allowed himself the privilege, but he had learned to be careful with his emotions at an early age. Every emotion but anger, at least.
It was… necessary, for someone like him. He couldn’t remember a time in his life where he hadn’t known that he was broken. Defective, to use the sort of dehumanizing euphemism that would have been popular in the prior days of the Empire, and that still echoed in hushed conversations to this day. He had always known both that he longed to be close to another man… and what that meant for him. Desires like his were still very much illegal in the Empire. Even if it was no longer a capital offense, it was still entirely routine for such men to be jailed if they were exposed.
Reinhard considered himself lucky, almost. He was better off than the men who only realized what they were later in life, who had built careers and lives around themselves before finally being forced to accept what they really were. He had at least been granted the luxury of having almost his entire life to practice the deception, both of himself and of others, that would be required of him.
“For a time,” he insisted in his own head. He still needed the power to end the procession of Kaisers, even if Friedrich IV had robbed him of the right, and then he would move swiftly to change all that. Some particularly petty part of him wanted nothing more than to have that be his second act once that horrible relic of a truly loathsome family had ceased taking in breath and had been escorted down into a place of dishonor within the truly putrescent pit of hell that he hoped was waiting for every member and supporter of the ancien régime.
Ensuring that no woman would ever be treated like chattel in the way his sister had been came first, of course, but to have his first public step towards reforming his nation be to end one of the injustices that had hurt him most personally and to reveal to everyone who still held a retrograde view of the world that the man who had ended the revolting tyranny of kings and nobles was a goddamned faggot both soothed his pain somehow and fed something to the deep anger inside his heart.
When he was at his most indulgent, he even fantasized about holding one last grand wedding to the standards kept for royal marriages, just to stand as an equal…. No. To stand forth as a superior to every ruler of the Goldenbaum dynasty, none of whom had achieved one one-hundredth of the footprint on history that he was to leave, and to show perpetuity itself that his permanent bond to the love of his life was as worthy as any that came before it. Far more worthy, indeed, since no man before him had managed to conquer the galaxy for the one he loved.
Even in Reinhard’s attempts to make himself feel better, he managed to twist the knife so much deeper. For him, the broken deviant that he was, happiness and comfort were synonymous with a name. Kircheis. Even just as a thought, he felt as if it deserved to be written in the most intricate of golden filigree. He was his dearest friend, and he had been his only one until after he had already become an officer. He was also, more than anyone else, the focus of his forbidden desires and feelings. And now, when he was by his own estimation only perhaps a year from the trying choice of taking his final victory over the Empire with a gun or a knife, one of the two people who gave him his reason to even want to win in the first place almost surely hated him forever.
He didn’t know what he wanted to be true: had Kircheis just broken up with him because of what he had done out of his own thirst for victory and power and the freedom that came with it before they ever got the chance to acknowledge the love that they shared, or had he never even loved him? Reinhard had tried, but until he had won and vindicated his feelings, he couldn’t bring himself to tell even Kircheis what he was. He was affectionate to him, perhaps more affectionate than he should be, but allowing himself tiny cracks in his façade made keeping the entire thing standing far easier.
There were… dalliances in the past, but they had remained entirely physical and were separated by years.
He had kissed the beautiful boy that had saved him when he let his temper fool him into thinking that he could storm the palace with a gun and save his sister alone, after he shared what would become his second most guarded secret with him. It was somewhat ironic that he shared his republicanism more freely than his sexuality even now, when one was a capital offense and the other was not, but he would rather be hung for his cause than be disgraced for life. They’d spent much of the rest of that night lying under the stars together, laying the first bricks in what would become their grand plan. While they had had more hushed conversations about their future breaching Neue Sanssouci, neither had ever breached the topic of the kiss again.
He had been indiscreet on only one other occasion, in the midst of one of the few vacations that his ambition had allowed him: a camping trip that he had taken with Kircheis as a teenager. One night, as Kircheis undressed to make himself comfortable in the heat of a particularly sweltering summer evening, he had been overcome by his teenage hormones and… had made it wordlessly clear to his dearest friend what he had needed. He had been slightly forceful that night, not quite himself, but the object of his desire had given him no sign that he was anything but willing to tend to Reinhard’s needs, and had fallen asleep close to him like he wanted so badly. When Reinhard woke, however, his beau was nowhere to be seen, having awoken first and managed to slip away from him without waking him.
He knew that Kircheis was willing to do anything that he asked or needed of him. Was that all Kircheis saw him as? Was he really such a brilliant leader that he’d convinced another man who wasn’t even broken like him to grant him a few unspeakable favors while they were still boys? Had the brilliant crimson lodestar that was one of the two reasons he had walked down the path he had taken just been a truly supportive friend?
The thought made him let out a solitary, choked sob. Yet, part of him thought that was less cruel a possibility than the alternative. At least then, he had never had a chance of having the life he wanted, instead of starting with a chance and, through his own cruelty, having thrown it away.
He was standing over the corpse of one of the men who opposed him. This time, it was Braunschweig. Apparently, one of his former military underlings was delivering his body to him as an attempt to curry favor and find a place in his new Imperial Navy.
He could forgive a man who served with distinction and who was motivated to fight against him by loyalty, but he had no room in his heart to forgive a man so debased as to be the personal military assistant to Prince Braunschweig.
However, he barely had time to put together what he wanted to tell the creature that stood before him in the crude shape of a man before it happened.
Before he could even begin to speak to him, something that Reinhard allowed only out of what remained of his courtesy, Ansbach reached forward and pulled a gun forth from Braunschweig’s coffin. “Marquis Lohengramm, I will avenge my lord!” was all that he said before he fired, but the moment was such a flash of activity it hardly mattered.
Oberstein immediately jumped to shield Reinhard with his own body, as Kircheis all but leaped forward onto this man to ensure that he could not endanger his close friend. Kircheis protecting him was nothing new, but it still made some part of him happy to see the speed at which he was willing to commit such an act of bravery for him. Every bit of blood in Reinhard’s body froze rock solid in one second just a moment later.
He had another weapon concealed in his ring, and a moment after Kircheis wrestled Ansbach to the ground, he fired the laser in his ring, puncturing through Kircheis’ chest and making him immediately cough forth a burst of blood as beautifully crimson as his hair.
The sight would have broken Reinhard at any time, but with the state he had been in of late, he couldn’t help himself. He all but threw Oberstein out of the way in his haste to run over to Kircheis, who was already on the ground. He tried to be as gentle as his heart would let him as he gripped Kircheis’ hand and screamed out for someone to get a doctor, only to hear the voice of his dearest friend say what he knew already.
“Too late…” was all he said, as Reinhard sobbed uncontrollably.
“No!” the blonde shouted through his tears, still managing to sound as impetuous as ever even in a moment like this. “It can’t be. It can’t. Kircheis… I need you.” His voice dropped to barely more than a whisper and sounded achingly vulnerable.
Kircheis already felt weak, and he doubted that he would have more than a moment left. “Lord Reinhard… I promised I’d follow you forever. I am sorry that your most loyal subordinate has failed you,” he said, choking softly on his own blood to punctuate the last sentence.
“Kircheis, you have to live, because I… I…” was as much as Reinhard was able to get out before he choked on his own tears and misery, stuttering and failing to push the words he needed to say before the only person he could ever tell them to was unable to hear them out of his throat. He leaned down close, to speak right into the perfect redhead’s ear. He could not bear to look at his face fully, he was too beautiful even in his dying moment.
Before he could say the words that he needed to say, he felt the man that he cherished go limp and still in his arms, the emptiness of his eyes making it clear that he would never get the chance to say them now, but he still did, even if they would never be heard. “I love you,” the blonde murmured, knowing that they were words he would never need to make use of again.
Reinhard’s eyes bolted open. He was still laying atop his bedcovers, soaked in sweat, panting and with his heart pounding in his chest. He had been sobbing, even outside his dream. It was just a terrible dream, he knew that on some level, but there was nothing that knowledge did to unclench his chest. Even if he couldn’t, even if he perhaps hated him or perhaps didn’t have enough feelings towards him for them to include hate.
It was only 3 AM. He quickly tried to decide if his pajamas were clean enough to walk across a mostly sleeping ship. He hardly thought Kircheis would react properly to him showing up in his uniform… If nothing else, his uniform had to stay ready and perfect to wear for the meeting in a precious few hours, and he didn’t like his own odds that he wouldn’t dirty them with his tears during the conversation that he had to have.
If the dream was some sort of vision from on high or if it was just a random scene collected together out of his own fears didn’t matter, what mattered was the response that it quickly engendered in him, and what he had realized about the current condition. Reinhard refused to let his own cowardice get in the way of what he needed to say to Kircheis finally, even if it was ahead of schedule.
He strode forth out of his cabin looking flushed and red-eyed. He tried to ensure that no one else who worked at this moment saw him, since he worried that he’d only start rumors about himself by doing this. He was trying his best to just focus on finding his way within Geiersberg to the suite that Kircheis was using during their stay aboard the fortress. It was just different enough inside from Iserlohn for his memories to be a handicap rather than an advantage.
He simply walked up to Kircheis’ quarters and knocked on the door to try to wake him. He didn’t know what state of mind Kircheis would be in regarding him, he didn’t know if he’d be receptive of what to say, there were just certain words that he couldn’t risk going unspoken, a truth he had to give the taller blonde man.
Kircheis knew who was the only person that would pound on his door at this time of the morning. This was one of the few times that he could remember where he would not happy to meet Reinhard, but all the same, he rose in his pajamas and went to open the door for him, unsure what had made him seek his attention so early.
“Lord Reinhard?” he asked, about to start into some formality about the time before noticing what state the man was in. He was unsure when the last time that he had seen Reinhard cry was. The man was normally too steely-willed to allow it of himself, and he had no idea what had prompted this, stepping aside for his oldest and closest friend to come inside with him so that the two of them could speak.
Reinhard reached out and grasped Kircheis tight to himself for a long moment, holding his chest against him and just feeling the obvious signs of life that emanated from the redhead, his mind flooding with relief even as he started to actually cry once more.
“You’re alive! Oh Kircheis, you’re alive…” was the first thing that Reinhard managed to piece together and say.
After a moment, Reinhard pulled back, realizing the manifest strangeness of his behavior, stepping back to give a tiny bit of space to the taller man, before walking over to the small loveseat up against one of the walls, finding a place to sit other than Kircheis’ bed, a space that he found far too fraught.
Kircheis followed him over and sat next to him, looking at the other man expectantly, still not sure what had come over him. “What has made you wake me like this? After what you have done, do you really need me to sooth you because you had a nightmare?”
“I could have had a normal life,” Reinhard said, knowing that it was both not an answer and partly a lie. He could have had a different extraordinary life, perhaps, but not an ordinary one. “But I chose to become who I am now because I knew I could not let my sister be taken from us. I chose to devote myself to something impossible for any lesser man than myself so that I did not have to live with the regret that would come with forgoing my cause.” Even with his heightened emotions, he was still prone to unavoidable bombast.
“Was your cause always to include the slaughter of innocents for your own personal gain, Lord Reinhard?” Kircheis asked in response, the pain and betrayal he felt sharpening his tone.
“Oberstein…” he said, looking for words that would let him simply avoid the situation, before accepting that he could not suffer cowardice such as that from himself. “I could try to tell you how that rat Oberstein went behind my back to cause the massacre on Westerland or how he has even tried to push the two of us apart, but that will not bring two million innocent lives back.”
“I promised you that I would stay loyally by your side. I meant that when we were boys, and I still mean the same thing now… But I had not realized that your convictions could take you so sharply in a direction where I would be unsure that I could follow.”
Those words hurt Reinhard deeply, in a way that brought what he needed to do to a head almost as sharply as the dream had. “I cannot lose you, Kircheis. And yet, there is something I have to tell you. Something I have to be honest with you about, because I cannot live with the regret that would fill me if I failed.”
“But first, I have to tell you something about myself that I have never told a soul,” he continued. “My sister caused me to walk the path that I have, but there is another unjust privilege of the Kaisers that spurred my destiny. Kaspar was able to be what he was and abdicate the throne to live off in the woods with one of his servant boys, and yet if I ever told anyone how just seeing your perfect face makes me feel… Even now I doubt I would be safe.”
Kircheis rarely heard Reinhard speak imprecisely or without the utmost directness. He knew what Reinhard was going to say from the moment he was unable to speak just what the historical rumors around Kaspar were. Even as furious as he felt at Reinhard, he still reached out and softly grasped one of his hands with both of his own, which by now were balled into fists, as they always were when his emotions became heated enough.
“Do you really think that you need to tell me that?” he asked, his tone having softened drastically. “I realized that you were gay when we were both sixteen. You grabbed my hand and pressed it into your underwear when we were changing in a tent.” Despite himself, he smiled gently.
Reinhard flushed as he was reminded of that moment, and yet… Kircheis was still here, still holding his hand with his own blessedly soft ones. A moment of renewed nerve came over him as he spoke again. “That is not everything that I was trying to say,” he said, pausing for a moment to find his words, comforted by the fact that he had more than a few seconds to do so this time. “I have never felt lonely nor regretted the path that I have taken in life, because I have always had you with me. I love you deeply, Kircheis.”
Kircheis remained silent for a moment after hearing those words, simply staring at Reinhard, until finally he spoke again. “I am sorry… When you say something with so much conviction, you get a sparkle in your eyes that makes me think of the boy who could not control his own impulses but still convinced me to upend my entire life so that I could try to change the galaxy forever with him.”
He shifted from holding Reinhard’s fist with both his hands, wrapping one arm around the other man and holding him close against his side. “That night was when I fell in love with you, you know. I wanted to go to school and live a normal life and take over my parents’ flower shop, but the thought of running away from all of it with you made my heart flutter so hard that I nearly fainted.”
“That’s what terrifies me about you,” he said. “I do not think that I could turn away from you no matter how dark the path you walk becomes. That was not a problem when I thought I could trust you not to do monstrous things, but if you listen to rats like Oberstein and become the same kind of man as Rudolf, I do not know what I am to do.”
Reinhard exhaled heavily. “I do not know what I could offer you that would soothe your fear.”
“If nothing else, promise me.”
“I promise you shall never need to leave my side.”
At this moment, that was all that Kircheis needed. Reinhard may have done his best to sound like his usual, confident self, but he knew that he was terrified on the inside. So, impulsively, he decided to try to make him feel more comfortable. Kircheis pressed a soft, gentle kiss to the blonde’s lips, not awkward and impulsive and childish as Reinhard’s had been all those years ago, but also not overly passionate, just a simple physical expression of a feeling he had been aching to share for so long.
Reinhard was a bright pink when Kircheis pulled back, only managing to speak after a moment. “It is very late, and I have barely slept. I worry if I could even make it back to my own room…” he murmured up at the redhead who had just kissed him.
Kircheis regretfully stood up, the closeness he had longed for all the more precious in its absence. He lead Reinhard to his own bed, the sheets still hastily pulled back from when he had heard knocking at his door and had known who the only person who would have done that rather than using his phone would be. He lied down first, taking his normal position on his side, knowing that he wanted Reinhard near him, but unsure how close he would be.
Reinhard wasted no time at all lying next to him, curling into his front and tucking his head under Kircheis’ chin, letting the taller man wrap an arm around him to keep him close. It was deeply intimate, even if both were still clothed. Sleep overtook them in moments.
Kircheis, unsurprisingly, woke first. He was surprised, to say the least, to feel such warmth against his body, much less to open his eyes and see that it was Reinhard against him. Not that it could have been anyone else, there was no one else he would let share his bed like this, but he had been so certain that the night before had just been a pleasant dream. It still felt unreal to him, actually. His fingers had tangled into the blonde’s gorgeous, curly hair in his sleep, and it felt so right to lie with him this close.
He had the completion of what he had wanted for so long. The morning was busy both for him and especially for Reinhard, so he mournfully began to move to free himself, since the man he was sharing a bed with had moved to hold him in return. He began to stir slowly, gripping him tighter for a moment before eventually rolling onto his back and acquiescing.
“I loathe that this is not how I wake up every morning,” Reinhard said. “What would Oberstein think if he saw this?”
The question set something off in Kircheis. It reminded him of what had happened, why he had barely been able to speak to Reinhard, and of why it was wrong for him to have spent the night like that.
“That reminds me…”, the man still laying in the bed added, still struggling to wake up after his abbreviated sleep. “You and I should not act any different to each other in public. Not until I can make it safe. Once that is done, I plan on marrying you.” Reinhard was as confident as ever, and as unwilling to hide just how high his ambitions were.
Kircheis couldn’t do this. He couldn’t handle that self-sure attitude from a man he didn’t even trust. “It is good that you do not expect us to act differently than before, Lord Reinhard. Despite last night, we start this morning the same as when I retired from your presence yesterday. I cannot allow someone to hold me with blood-soaked hands, and I cannot trust someone who acts in opposition to their principles.” He got dressed as he spoke, trying his best to camouflage his pain in the same way that he had seen Reinhard do it many times.
“I suggest that you return to your cabin soon. You badly need a shower before the senior command staff meeting at nine, and you will not have time if you do not return soon.”